I never understood the adoration for that game. Back in the day, I read constant glowing reviews of it, so I got it for my Atari 800XL (which replaced my Atari 400). It seemed like most of the time I was just staring at stars flying by...
For the 2600, my favorite games were Kaboom and Yar's Revenge.
I had Yar before it was even in stores. My dad had a friend who worked at a chip fabrication plant and he would swipe a handful of ROMs. He had a little business going of "converting" Atari cartridges from one game to another. For example, he could take your Asteroids and "convert" it to Pac Man for $15. He would take out the Asteroids ROM and put in a Pac Man ROM - then he had the Asteroids ROM to "convert" someone else.
I was his "salesman" at my school. :-) In return for my sales, he gave me a cartridge that had a type of ZIF socket (Zero Insertion Force) sticking out of it and ROMs for all of the 2600 games. So I would just have this special cartridge inserted into the 2600 and pop in and out the ROM chips to play different games.
I once knew someone who could call out to California on his 300 baud modem and download stuff that wasn't due to be released until the next year, he got hold of 1985 releases in 1984 and so on. He used a Franklin Ace 1000 (Apple ][+ clone) with a 10 megger Sider HD. I thought 10 megs, wow, never fill that thing! He avoided long distance charges by "phreaking" too, bypassing the phone company accounting system and so on. Then he told us this, I thought, "dude, what if you start seeing Black Ford LTD's with small FoMoCo hubcaps and radio antennae hanging around you along with guys in suits, dark sunglasses and radio earpieces on their heads?" He said, "my father is a Lt. Colonial in the Air Force (he was) and he'll get me off." We lost contact as we graduated school and moved on, so far as I know, he was never caught but I wonder where he is now? I've heard rumors he is/was laying low but I can't confirm nor deny.